What a day! I’m going to attempt to keep this entry shorter because I’ve sacrificed sleep the last two nights to finish the posts, but there were so many great and interesting aspects of today that I need to mention. First of all, my roommate and I were the first Cardinal Singers to breakfast today by about a half hour! I envy them for sleeping more, but my habit of waking early with or without an alarm has remained despite the time zone jump.
This morning at 11:30, our choir had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sing a few selections inside the Berliner Dom. The Berliner Dom is an architectural marvel and one of the most well-known churches to see in Berlin in a city full of them. The current building replaced a previous one in 1894, but the church organization itself has roots going back to serving as a castle chapel for the Berlin Palace in the 1400s. In addition to the architectural beauty inside and out, the church’s crypt is the final resting place of the ruling Prussian Family of Brandenburg, the Hohenzollern. I am always moved by gorgeous historic churches, and I started to tear up when I entered Berliner Dom today. Such beauty that is created to glorify God moves me, and I would argue that the same divine inclination exists in sacred music as well.
After singing our set of four sacred pieces, the choir was free to be tourists for the rest of the day, so my group headed first to the top of the Berliner Dom to take in the views on its observation deck. Seeing the whole city from that vantage point is magnificent, and seeing church steeples dominate the skyline in every direction is a stark difference from the United States that is worth appreciating.
Following a lovely lunch along a canal where I enjoyed some chicken schnitzel (those who know me will not be the least bit surprised that I’ve found fried chicken in Germany!), my group headed to the Berlin Fernsehturm (in English, TV tower). The Fernsehturm was constructed in East Germany in 1969 as both a television broadcasting station and a symbolic flex of Soviet-mandated Communism’s might. To this day, it is the tallest structure in Germany, and its observation deck views make the Berliner Dom’s look miniscule. There are maps around the deck that highlight important structures in the distance, and seeing the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, and other iconic areas of Berlin from that high up puts into perspective how massive the city is. It is immensely walkable and the fast public transit makes the city feel smaller than it is in terms of commute time, but the sheer sprawl of Berlin in every direction from the Fernsehturm cannot be overstated.
After leaving the Fernsehturm, we headed to a church on the same city block called St.-Marien-Kirche. St.-Marien-Kirche is the second oldest church building in Berlin (having been built in the 13th century.) There were two connections to the United States at the church (even one to Louisville) that I was not expecting! First of all, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Germany and preached there in 1964 while on a tour of Berlin. In his prescient sermon, he referred to the Berlin Wall (then only 3 years old) as a “symbol of the divisions of men on the face of the Earth. For here on either side of the wall are God’s children and no man-made barrier can obliterate that fact. Whether it be East or West, men and women search for meaning, hope for fulfillment, yearn for faith in something beyond themselves, and cry desperately for love and community to support them in this pilgrim journey.”
The Martin Luther King Jr. connection was chill-inducing, but the Louisville connection was less profound. Unfortunately, the gorgeous altar space in the church was undergoing extensive renovations and was closed to public viewing, so in its place was an art installation of a digital cross moving across what I can only describe as a spinning disco ball. For those who are unaware, Louisville is nicknamed the “Disco Ball Capital of the World” and the “Glitter City” because in the 70s and 80s, a disco ball company in Louisville manufactured the most disco balls of any city in the world. The artist for the installation wrote a very self-important and thought-provoking note leaving the meaning of the projection up to individual interpretation and suggesting it may show the cross shining over the whole Earth. I’d be more inclined to believe the artist if the installation wasn’t modeled after a disco ball. The Cross of the Crucifixion spinning on a disco ball-esque palette that evokes such excess of both material needs and lavish personal desires rather than spiritual discipline frankly annoyed me, but it was certainly a humorous juxtaposition I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
After a small group dinner at a German-owned “Tex-Mex” restaurant (quick review: the burger was served on what can only be described as an English muffin and the “cole slaw” had orange slices diced up in it; tasty but hardly classifiable as Tex-Mex), we headed to our first combined rehearsal with the Junges Ensemble Berlin for our Berlin Philharmonic performance of Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42 and Die erste Walpurgisnacht. The concert is on June 9th at 8:00 PM Germany time for any Berliners interested in attending, and while rehearsing together for the first time two days before the concert may sound daunting, the choirs blended seamlessly tonight and had a wonderful rehearsal. When the Cardinal Singers traveled to Berlin in the Fall of 2022 we had a joint concert with the Junges Ensemble Berlin, so having a musical reunion with them one and a half years later is extremely fulfilling. During the rehearsal, the Cardinal Singers and Junges Ensemble members intentionally sat mixed amongst each other, and hearing the German singers’ precise vowels and consonant onsets was an amazing lesson in German diction.
The rehearsal ended at 10:00 PM, so I headed back to our hotel to draft this blog post and get some sleep. I realized upon drafting this paragraph that this entry ended up being no shorter than the others, but there were too many great experiences and stories to tell today to spare a single paragraph. I also need to thank a few of my colleagues for sharing their photographs with me for the blog! Some of our members are gifted photographers, and you’ll notice under some of today’s photos I’ve included their names to give them due credit. Tomorrow only entails one additional rehearsal for the Mendelssohn concert, so I’ll look forward to updating you again tomorrow with more explorations of this breathtaking city!